Archive for September, 2007

In 1973 I went to an open air Leonard Cohen concert in Wolfville, Nova Scotia Wolfville, Nova Scotia. That night we had planned on sleeping in the local cemetery – after all, it was 1973! But as we began to bed down, a young woman happened by and, horrified at the thought of us sleeping outside in a graveyard, she took us home. We made fast friends with Dorothy and her husband Joel, and over the next few days they treated us to the hospitality the Maritimes is so famous for. Joel worked at the post office, but his passion was Vintage cars. His garage was full of the ones he was working on, in various states of assembly and disrepair. He drove us around the area showing us the sights; Blomadon, Kentville, Hall’s Harbour and the Bay of Fundy… (home of famously huge tides, where my parents would later buy a rum-runner’s cottage).

At one house along the way we stopped to visit a friend of his. And there, in the backyard, sat a beautiful maroon car. It was a Jag, a ’52 or ’53, with gorgeous brown leather interior aged like spanish boots. The round curves and silver the hood ornament, the dash and wooden trim rolling up over the edge of the doors… I was in love.
A gorgeous Jaguar.

Right then and there, at age sixteen, with no money and no license I began scheming about how I could Get That Car.

I would take a mechanic’s course, learn how to fix it myself. I would get a better job and earn the money – just $2000 – I could DO it!

…Sadly, for all those “roads never traveled” reasons, well, it just never happened. 34 years have passed now, yet here I am, still dreaming of my first love, that magnificent maroon Jag.